Accelerating business growth by modernizing the media mix

CHALLENGE:A major credit union turned to OCD Media in early 2012 to accelerate their membership growth. They had been using newspaper and radio in the NY DMA and membership growth had stagnated, along with product uptake.

SOLUTION:We immediately saw that this organization needed to modernize its media mix to incorporate TV and digital media in order to reach their aspirational audience of younger, dual gender and ethnicity more in line with the population profile New York City. We employed extensive research, analyzing the customer profiles of competitive credit unions, and of those individuals who are eligible to become members (primarily municipal employees in NYC). We developed customized research studies working with Scarborough specifically targeting current members in order to contrast the profiles of current members with those individuals who they desired to have as members. Separate media consumption analyses were developed to identify common media properties that were consumed by both groups, as well as those that were unique to each so that appropriate plans could be developed relative to the objective of the campaigns.

We introduced TV in small geographies to prove its impact. We slowly expanded from Brooklyn and The Bronx in local cable to all NY counties east of the Hudson River and eventually got to the full DMA and added over-the-air stations.

Our overriding strategy is to drive response to the website through the delivery of very targeted product offerings (low interest loans/credit cards). Television, Out-Of-Home and Digital are the core of their media spend in 2019.

While securing the best pricing available is always paramount for an advertiser with a modest advertising budget (to that end we frequently secure bonus spots of up to 50% above the purchased schedules), securing synergistic promotional/added value elements is also key. Most notably in the television space, the credit union is an on-going sponsor of Ethnically targeted efforts (ie Black History Month, Puerto Rican Day Parade, etc) that reach core segments of their target audience, as well as in market social programs working with CBS-TV’s charity division, Eco-Media, the credit union funded computer equipment donated to a High School in Brooklyn where computers were not affordable within the school budgets. In out-of-home we receive bonus months even though we are paying preferential rates. In broadcast TV we receive bonus spots and billboards in the highly sought after early morning news programs.

RESULTS:At the end of the day, the measure of success for the credit union is securing new members and promoting increased product offerings to existing customers. When we began supporting the credit union they had a little over 300,000 members that had been acquired over 95 years. Beginning 2019 we had grown their membership base to over 500,000—a 60% growth rate in 7 years with no increase in the annual media budget.